Studying Music Online

Hey there, Liam McCormack, Student Advisor at Berkleemusic here! As we are approaching our Fall Term, starting on Sept 28th, I wanted to take a moment to speak about one of my favorite courses that Berkleemusic offers online, the Lyric Writing: Tools and Strategies online songwriting course.

I was a Songwriting major at the Berklee College of Music and I am very familiar with the content in the Tools and Strategies course. In fact, it was Berklee’s exemplary Songwriting curriculum that really drew me to the college. This course is a wonderful introduction into the world of lyric writing and instructs students on brainstorming lyrical ideas, developing rhyming structures, and many of the other subtleties that go into crafting lyrics to communicate a certain emotion and/or story.

Through experimenting with different rhyme patterns, line lengths, syllable stresses, and much more—you will learn how to take your lyrical ideas and creatively map them out to make your song the best it can be for your listener.

In addition to all the great advice and tools you will pick up in the course, you will also benefit immensely from the feedback coming your instructor and your fellow students. As a songwriter, I can recount many times where I have spent hours and hours on a song and then a listener makes a comment or asks a question about the lyrics–and that feedback opens a whole new creative perspective that inspires further revisions and lyrical improvements.

Lyric writing is a form of expression. Expressing a certain emotion–expressing your unique perspective–perhaps through a narrative story, or simply a catchy sing-a-long chorus.

The Lyric Writing: Tools & Strategies course enables you to channel and organize your thoughts and feelings into a catalog of accessible and imaginative songs. Have fun with it!

I hope you check out this  course and many of our other exciting Songwriting courses.